>> lead u to a better solution. if you do not, mr. president, you will go down in history as one of the most irresponsible commanders in chief in the history of our country. >> this week on "inside washington," gunfight at the sequestrationn corral. >> i believe they should pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms t that would delay the economically damaging effects of the sequester for a few more mononths until congress finds a way. >> john brennan, the cia, and drone stkes. > i never believe it is better to kill a terrorist bent to

detain him. >> mar r rubio the savior of republican party, and the migrion debate. this is our responsibility to get it right for the country and those sufuffering under the system that does not work for anybody. >> the lights go out at the super bowl, raising questions about our nation's infrastructure. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> punxsutawney phil didid not see his shadow of this year, which means that spring will come early. tell that to the folks in boston who are buried in snow. in washington, every day is groundhog day. the subjeconce again is the federal budget, federal debt, and with it strikes fear into the hearts of contractors in

d.c. and federal suburbs sequestration. >> it gives new meaning to the termmarch madness," bececause that is what will result if we have to face sequester. >> that is why i fought not to have thesequester in the first place. but the president did not want to have to d deal with the debt limitit again before his reelection. >> we will furlough many as 800,000od civilians around the country for up to 22 days. >> defense secretary leon panetta says that if sequestration kicks in and billions of defense cuts are allowed to stand they will have to for the defense strategy out the window, badly damamaging our ability to respond toto crises around the world. it would be a $10 trillion cut in spending, half from the defense department, no corresponding rise in taxes. what is your best guess, evan

will happen? >> yeah, i think it willappen. >> i if that happens mk, the consequences? >> carl levin thinks the odds are probably even. the iceberg is there, we can see it, and we continue to sell the ship in the direction of it. i think repubublicans particularly speaker boehner, don't want a. >> colby, how did it come to this? >> they kicked it down the r road. they put it off, thought it would never happen. they put it up so that it frightened everybody but they cannot get themselves together. tax cuts, entitlement reform -- they can not get it done. we are not going to have sequestration. we are going to have castration of the military, castration of domestic programs and a they see

it coming. and the president coming up with the proposal to do a bit on both sides, the first word out of speaker boehner's off is thawe will not had any type of tax increase. >> we alreready had one. nina. >> it will be awful, and it is not just the contractors, notot just the military. it is sending out sociaial security checks on time, can you reach anybody at the irs when you have a question, major crimes being investigated, national security issuesboth domestically and abrd. the question is, how many weeks before common sen prevails? this will triggeger was set up by people who said, oh, we will never do this. it is so awful we will never do eight. but they seem to be frozen and the capacity. >> charles krauthammer or is off

this week, but he has this column -- "what should republicans do about sequestration? nothing. sit down with the president for negotiationsn real tax reform as rommendeded by mpson- bowles, broaden the tax base, lower tax ratates." sounds reasonable? >> it soundnds plausible, and for charles, it sounds exceptially reasonable. that is what the intention was. colbyut his finger on that -- when this was brought up, the alternative would be so terrifying that would force congressmen and senators. think in the short r, the political damage will be on the republicans. they are seen as obstructionists, been no party the rest of. but let's be blunt -- blunt -- if this goes on, it will be damaging to thee economy and the country and any sense o of public

confidence in government's ability to a positive force in our lives. >> evan, according to the congssional budget office, the defit is shrinkingng and will continue to shrink for a while. but its projected to increasese later because of an aging population, expansion of federal subsidies, growing interest on the debt. cbo is predicting th by 2023 if current laws remain in place it will be on an upward path. tell that to your kids and grandchildre >> i am a boring deficit hawk o this, i say the same thing over and over again. ul krugman ishas coconvinced a lot of my liberal friends that is okay to kick the can down the road.. > he actually used those words. >> terrible idea. it courts all sorts of disasters. cited interest rate spikes -- it could haen overnight. it takes a long time to fix

these problems. we have got to start on it now. sequestration is a cde, ugly tool. but if it has the effect of making people serious about entitlement and tax reforms, it would not be so bad. >> colby, what do you think?k? >> going back to charles' column, he says that this the first timeme since the election that presint obama has been put on defense. i don't think that is true. i agreree with m mark the republicans will bear the brunt of it ininitially, because they would be the obstructionists. looking at it and share political terms -- this h has cooool implications. -- global implications. >> nina, you think the american people are getting fed up with this? it has been going on for years. >> and more and more, worse and worse. just, for example, , and

infrastructure, which we will talk about later, but you had a five-year transportation bill. now we have but two-year transportation bill, now a nothing transportation bill bebecausof sequestration. >> what kind of crisis to you have to have? i would rather have an internal washington crisis like this than wait for a real crisis. if this would be a force in event -- >> if it would, that would not be ch a bad thing, but we keep having these forcing events and itwe just wait another three months. >> every state will be affected. >> the fall line i the conservative movement is clear here. what you have is john mccain warning that sequestration would be 1 million j jobs in defense cuts. at the s same time, "ththe wall reet journal" editorial-page is dismissing the cuts that would result because they do not want to touch any dollar of tax

increases even on carried interest which is taxed at the rate of 15% for millionaires.

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>> there has not been an occasion that i am aware of where we had the opportunity to capture a terrorist and we did not and we decided to take a strike. >> that is john brennan, minee to be direor of the cia. a lot of attention recently on ones and at the ability to take out bad guys and abroad including al-awlaki, who happened to be an american citizen. you have to go after the terrorists, and obama's reco some would say, is pretty impressive. >> if it is a continuation of the policy that george w. bush

laid down after 9/11, to pursue them wherever they are and whatever the circumstances. i don't-- the nototion that drones have kikilled civilians -- it is not just dronethat do it. ifif youou fire artillery in an area she might hit civilians. if you talk about american citizensns being targeted abroad, isn't it true that during world war ii had some americans who volunteered with the ss? >> that is correct, yes. >> this is not groundbreaking. it is somethingng we will have to think through but judicial way of having this thing or extrajudicial way of having thesese targets. but to say that we will not pursue them with drones to me is silly. >> shouldn't there be some place you go if you do target an

american citizen, some secret court, like the intelligence court, where you can say look, we are going to do this, we need a lel f finding. >> there probably y is in some cases, that that might work, but a great many times you don't have time. you find out about this fairly late and we just need toto do it. it is a question of boots on the ground o drones, a very unappetizing choice because you alienate people when you come at them froe the air or with puts on the ground. >> you could a argue that drones are more precise than f 18's. >> you can but there is a certain inconsistency if not hypocrisy. went george w. bushas doing it, there was a lot of l liberal criticism. that has increased dramatically under president obama, and with the exceptions, the liberals and

civil libertarians have been muted in their criticism -- >>ma obama has been much more aggressive. >> diane feinstein, chairman of the senate intelligence committee, says that we have such a process to get clearance for wiretaps. i don't think you can calculate the hostility and the enmity that is generated by civilian deaths and drones. >> drones _ the tragic nature of being a superpower. they are essential and are sure to end that they -- en bay. there will be a bad ending to this story but it is still necessary to do these thins because what else are we going to do? >> we have a secret army and the cia is going off on itsts own. you wrote a book about this -- >> it makes me e extremely anxious, because the history of covert action is that itften backfires. but it is just an existential

dilemma. i hate to be too fruity about this but if u are a superpower and are trying to keep peace in the well, yowill fto morally reprehensible thgs. >> i remember you predicted rightfter 9/11, get ready, we are going to be doing some very unpalatable things. >> of course, it just g goes with the territory. you can argue about how do it but the fact is that you have to do these terrible things -- >> the was a moment and it hearings that was indicative about waterboarding and torture in which brennan said he knew about it and protested but did not do anything to stop it because he was not in the chain ofof command. i thought that was a pretty reprehensible lancer. -- answer. on the other hand, i know that bob gates when he was cia director to the same thing --

did things that i had the same view about, and he turned o to be wonderful, the best bureaucrat. i don't think there is any way you cacan have these jobs and have me have any respect for your morals. >> if evan is fruity, he's a real peach. [laughter] on the subject of the hearing said john brennan and chuck hagel, that ba -- they stand in stark contrast. whatever one thinks about john brennan, he was in command, he was knowledgeable, asserertive direct, and he made his own case. would that chuck hagel had the same level -- >> he has been the lord high executioner. >> and he wants the military to take it. >> i don't blame him. >> he wants to get the cia backk to the business of collecting intelligence and not the paramitary kinds of things.

>> are we serious abo border security and empmployment verification, are we rious about making this the last last time we have this conversion, or we simply playing political games with people's lives and undercutting respect for the rulele of law,hich, ironically is the very reason they seek to come tthis country in the first place? >> that is a congressman from south carolina on the house immigration and border security subcommittee. a long time ago, ronald reagan said that hispanics w were republicans who did not know it yet. if the last election is any indication, they still down. -- don't. here is troubled and senator marco rubio playing a leading

role for republicans and proposing a -- republican senator marco rubio playing a leading wall for republicans proposing a path to citizenship. the man "time magazine" calls the savior of the republican pay. message -- hispanics, we love you, join our party. will they listen mark? >> yes, because they have noo alternative. they have to get to the point where they can talk to hispanic voters. >> i meant it, will hispanic listen to republicans? >> ask them. [laughter] i don't speak for hispanics, i speak for the nation. no marco rio is, quite frankly, a great talent. >> no questin. >> the only reason he has moved on immigration -- you may be aware -- is that his sainted mother left a voicemail sayg,

"ago e.c., these are our people, wjla.comom - -- -- go easy, these are our people, who came here for the right reasons." >> that is in the "time" story great story. >> do you belilieve that? [laughter] >> you guys are cynical. >> i don't know where he will end up four years from now. there will be other republicans who stepped into this, too. all we can do is evaluate the proposals and whether they have any impact. as far as hispanics and the republican party, it is policy. it is not about marco rubio, is about policy. republican polies are not because of policies that latinos -- >> there seems to be an awakening. >> talk about all the bad

politics, congress dysfunctional. here is actually a chance where american politics could force a good thing. to start running for president and reaching out to hispanics we could get a compromise everybody knows we need. >> it could, but over in the house, republicans are wanting to have their cake and eat it, too -- no real change, no path to citizenship, no green card. this is not a way to get a population to vote for you. >> my argument is that there is movement, there appears to become on the hill. >> there is, make e no mistake about it. john mccain put it very bluntly that his state would be a blue state, the democratic destiny. ann coulter has already come out against marco rio, saying that all you doing is creating more democratic votes with the path to cititizenship, just like

with easy divorce, in her judgment. >> does she have a point, colby? >> as far as rubio is concerned? >> creating more democratic votes. >> date and will probably continue to vote democratic until republicans come up with policies that attack their attentioto it when you have health care plans to that brings latis into the system, as obama's does, that his policy. you are not going to change that with marco rubio's face.

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what they said after watergate. [laughter] the power company said it was a faulty device they inslled. in any case, it brings m me to the question of infrastructure. the world economic forum rated us 23rd, between c chile and spain. >> it gets back to the gridlock in washington. the president proposed over and over again tt we tackle this problem of infrastruructur and we are going nowhere. the budget, the budget, the budget. infrastructure is going to continue to deteriorate. >> the electrical grid, roads bridges, tunnels -- the double the people we could put to work. >> i think is even more fundamental than that. cbs pointed d out that during the

blackout it was the fourth most watched television show in history --y [laughter] something called the future preference, which is a willingness to make sacrifices so that tomorrow will be rher, fairer, better country. boy, if that is missing from the dialogue of the debat-- >> the government increasingly writes checks to peoplple instead of writing checks to build things. we have got to start writing checks so that there is money to start building things again. >> sacrifice, ninna. >> we are the me generation and have been for awhile. people want to balance the budget but god forbid you trim their cial security or medicare, even if they think a

fairly well-to-do. >> what did kathleen sebelius heaar? keep your governme hands off medicare. >> when you're talking about social security, this is something that people have paid into -- >> oh, come on. they will pay in but get away more back -- >> i see we are all agreed on entitlements. that is the last word.